


Sea of Sanctuaries

by The_Amarathine_Carrion



Series: Omega Sylvain Week 2020 [2]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, M/M, Omega Sylvain, Omega Verse, Rare Pairings, short and bittersweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:35:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23982436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Amarathine_Carrion/pseuds/The_Amarathine_Carrion
Summary: Sylvain waits faithfully for Lorenz to return to the Monastery.
Relationships: Sylvain Jose Gautier/Lorenz Hellman Gloucester
Series: Omega Sylvain Week 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1728082
Comments: 6
Kudos: 17
Collections: Omega Sylvain Week





	Sea of Sanctuaries

**Author's Note:**

> Day 2 of Omega Sylvain week. Prompt: scent

Sylvain returns to the Monastery five years after the entirety of Fodlan wept. 

He returns as he retires from the role of executioner at the border, just to pick up the axe and point it countless times more at the neck of someone else’s mate, their brother, their friend. He returns from each excursion heavier than he left, despite the depleted rations and the broken lances he discarded along the road. He returns with the smell of death clinging to his weapons and the scent of sorrow burrowed deep into his spine. He washes anyway, trying to cover what he knows he cannot reach with soap and water alone.

He makes it himself the way Leonie taught him. Citrus peels to exfoliate, rose petals and soft earl grey to remind him of the one who soothes his pains.

His lions are here; physically they are present. They were the first to gather. All alive, but not living. All unbonded, yet willfully bound. Byleth formed a circle of protection around the monument, raising the flag high to signal their insurgence, waiting at the gate to welcome those she had sheltered before back to their home. 

And so, one by one, or many at a time, they came. Caspar and Linhardt rode in on the back of a farmer’s cart, sheepishly plucking the hay from their heads. Ignatz took the backroads and shortcuts only known to merchants, leading Marianne far ahead of Lysethia. Even Bernadetta developed the courage to creep back into her room one night, sticking her head out to acknowledge Dorothea humming on her way to the greenhouse.

Sylvain had encountered most of them by now, at the end of the hall or the end of his lance, but not  _ him _ . While others fill the pews of the cathedral to pray for victory, he bows his head in the unspeakable hours between the boundary of morning and night. He forfeits sleep, praying not to find him—and to find him—as if it was the only prayer he had left—and it is. 

Sylvain works hard to forget the scent of war—to forget the scent of all of it. The spirit of his beloved shields his skin. Unclaimed, he runs the risk of subjection. Yet, in his heart there is no deeper bond. He spends another heat alone, his nest surrounded by Seiros tea and bergamot. 

It is nearly six sunsets before he sees the skies again. 

A streak of purple soars across the horizon—long, slender, and sure—seeming all the more saturated against the bleeding hues of peach into strawberry, strawberry into scarlet. They returned two mornings ago, Byleth tells him. Dedue’s scars smile in a way his lips cannot turn. 

Sylvain beelines to the kitchen, searching the cupboards for the loose leaves that have become his second home. He tracks it with all of the faith still existing within him, his nose following the trail of delicate floral and citrus oils that he could not mistake for anything— neither in the midst of a feast or a battlefield. 

There are many things Sylvain cannot see, but he knows art as he knows breathing and he recognizes a masterpiece. He is a connoisseur of beauty; in this respect, his eyes have never failed him. He slips into Lorenz’s room, silent as the twilight bleeds into the final rays of the afternoon. The sun chases the moon, for reasons incomprehensible to a universe that sleeps, buried underneath its efficacy. 

_ “Sylvain.”  _ The two syllables are a celestial song that glides between the bellows of his lungs. “ _ I trust you’ve remembered the Bergamot.”  _

Gloucester’s mouth is the sea, his tongue the waves that ebb and flow and crash against the clay where Sylvain’s body became the borderline of his shore. Again and again, the ocean breathes, calling his name deep from the indigo abyss, pulling him from the cove back into the place where he was born.

“ _ You smell exquisite, my Darling. You are a rosebud whose petals open by the morning dew. Bloom only for me.” _

Someday, he will take Lorenz away from here. Someday, the corridor will be lit with bright burning oil. Merriment will echo off of the walls for all the world to overhear, instead of love nestling laughter into the creak of loose floorboards or the hidden corners of a vaulted ceiling, and all other places where to live unfathomed one must remain small. Some day, instead of half-truths and in secrets he dare not even whisper in the dark. In some future, somewhere, there is, and they are, and they will be: no longer haunted by the battle-horn blowing, fingernails free from the stench of rot, no need to shield their faces from the ashes of the fallen writhing in the wind.

To this day, there was only him, but tonight it will be them—swimming through the tears of river Acheron, drowning in the oblivion of Lethe, living and dying by the light that breaks the dust of sealed window panes to lay their bodies beneath the stars. 

_ “Love is an ocean which,  _

_ in all my years,  _

_ I cannot determine to swim.  _

_ But your love,  _

_ my burning one,  _

_ is a sea of sanctuaries—one that death cannot drown.” _

**Author's Note:**

> I am on [twitter](http://twitter.com/thefriedpipes)! Come talk more about fe3h with me 🤗


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